


the altean's guide to christmas (what is mistletoe and why do two of our paladins insist on making out?)

by smokesque



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Family Fluff, First Christmas, Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Voltron Secret Santa 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 23:39:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9147115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokesque/pseuds/smokesque
Summary: "It's Christmas tradition to kiss under the mistletoe.""Oh, is that what Keith and Lance are doing?""No, I think they mostly just like kissing."(the voltron team manage to make it home for christmas and it results in tender moments, family bonding and plenty of questions from the less-human attendees)





	

**Author's Note:**

> for [TJ](http://gaydrienagreste.tumblr.com/) as part of voltron secret santa. i know this is super late but hopefully you'll enjoy it all the same. merry christmas and happy new year !! i hope 2017 is a gentle year for you and that the holiday season is kind to you. have some fluffy klance to set your year off to a good start!

_Earth is warm_ , Lance thinks as he stares out the kitchen window at his parents’ house, arms submerged elbow deep in bubbles. He reaches for another bowl with slippery fingers and curses when dirty dishwater drips across the polished hardwood of the countertop.

 _Not in a physical sense_ , his brain rationalises. _At least, not always_.

The scrub in his hand squeaks against the ceramic bowl and he peers through the water to see if he’s finally cleaned out the dessert remains caked into the concave side. He never liked washing dishes in the past – he remembers paying his younger siblings to offer themselves in his place – but it’s been god knows how long since he’s stood at this sink. The murky water feels oddly comforting as it laps at his forearms.

Lance spares another look out the window. It’s as dull and wet as it had been minutes before, puddles seeping into the garden soil. Hopefully his dad’s tomato plants will flourish after the shower. Lance knows that, if he were to step outside, goosebumps would rise on his bare skin and he’d shiver in his sleeveless shirt. The weather is cold, one look at the cloud-littered sky tells him that much, but Earth is inherently warm. Something about the atmosphere, his family, rain and beaches and breakfast in bed. It’s warm and it’s _home_ in a way that space could never be.

Lance’s mother clatters into the room, one arm supporting a stepladder across her shoulder, the other sloshing water onto the tiles from an old, dented bucket. She is a strong woman – the kind with blistered palms and hair that tumbles from a clasp to messily frame her flushed face. Lance knows every crease of her skin, could map out cities in the wrinkles of her cheeks. But since returning he’s noticed new bags underlining her eyes. The crinkles from her smile are now paired with frown lines between her eyebrows that Lance is sure he doesn’t remember from before. Her fingers are frailer than Lance had ever realised, her shoulders more hunched, and the usual confident posture with which she carries herself replaced with a stoop that doesn’t suit the character Lance knows beneath her skin. Yet she stills holds the warmth of the Earth in her body, every movement like a breath of hot air. Lance still finds home in the colour of her lips and the mole on the back of her left hand.

“Lance, hon, you’ve got something to wear tonight, don’t you? God, I need to mop this floor all over again now. We’ll have to sacrifice the bedroom windows, I think.”

Lance laughs as his mother starts muttering to herself. He drains the sink of dirty water and dries his arms on the tea towel hung from a bar under the sink.

“It’s alright, Mum, I don’t think anyone’ll mind. Want me to do the floor?”

He steps over to press a kiss to the crown of his mother’s head. Was he always taller than her? Did she always curl in on herself like her entire figure is lined with exhaustion?

“No, you’ve done enough already. You go and get ready for tonight while I get your brother on the case.”

Lance smiles, brushing past her to exit the kitchen. He’s not complaining about the extra time he has been presented with, considering the whole routine he has to run through before evening comes.

“Lance?” his mother calls as he takes half a step through the doorway. He stops and twists back to catch her eye. “I’m just glad you’re home.”

“Me too, Mum.” His face captures a soft look as he nods along to her statement, the warmth seeping into his features, gently softening the edges and rounding the corners until he is as warm as the planet he loves. “Me too.”

*

Lance fingers the cuff of his dress shirt nervously, rubbing the material between his thumb and forefinger. It’s ridiculous; he’s spent the better part of a year in space with the Voltron team as his only company. He’s seen them through their ups and downs, shared far too many personal moments with them, even fought for his life by their sides. But there’s something nerve-wracking about being sandwiched between two of his aunts on a couch in the middle of his sitting room that makes the idea of speaking to his closest friends one that shakes him to the core.

_(That’s not really what’s making him anxious. He knows what it really is. He denies it all the same.)_

Hunk arrives first and it’s okay, it’s normal. Both his mums kiss Lance on the cheek and bustle to the kitchen with bags of presents for all of Lance’s family. Hunk looks suitably embarrassed by the entire exchange, and it’s just as Christmas should be. Lance manages to extract himself from the increasingly uncomfortable proximity of his aunts and takes up door duty with Hunk, pressed shoulder to shoulder in the corridor. Family members and neighbours alike spill through the door and each greet the two with excitement at their return. Lance smiles as he accepts hugs and well-wishes from people he pretends to remember. (He thinks Hunk is pretending too but he wouldn’t put it past his friend to _actually_ remember each person who arrives.)

Eventually Pidge shows up, arm linked through their mother’s. Pidge’s mother introduces herself and makes a gallant effort not to let her smile slip. Lance supposes spending the holiday season without her husband and son never gets easier. He takes the two newcomers to meet his parents, before they return to the front door sans Mrs Holt.

_(The easy part is over. Lance’s anxiety spikes.)_

It isn’t long before the group makes their appearance: Shiro and Allura in the lead, followed by Coran with Keith trailing at the rear. For the first time that evening, Lance admits to himself that this is the moment he’s been dreading. _What will he say when Keith steps through the door?_

Thankfully, Hunk diffuses some of the tension by scooping them all into a group hug that’s all elbows and shoulders and the warmth that Lance recognises as _home_. Allura complements the situation with a kiss to everyone’s cheek – Lance nearly faints – and they end up crowding into Lance’s small kitchen to make the acquaintance of his parents. In the struggle to squish through the door, Lance and Keith manage to muddle their way to the back of the group side by side. Lance grips Keith’s forearm as they follow the others into the room, smiling at the way his boyfriend jerks slightly in surprise. They don’t have time to greet each other properly, but Lance tucks his chin over Keith’s shoulder so that his breath is hot against the lobe of Keith’s ear.

“Merry Christmas babe,” he whispers, before dropping his hand to lace his fingers through Keith’s and raising his head to catch his mother’s eye. And if his breathing stops for a moment when he notices Keith’s lingering blush – well, it can’t be helped.

*

They’re snuggled together on one of the couches, bodies curled tightly into one another with Lance’s legs thrown haphazardly over Keith’s lap and Keith’s head tucked into the crook of Lance’s shoulder. _It’s sickening_ , is what Lance would say if he saw anyone else like this. In fact, he said that exact phrase to his brother mere hours earlier when he noticed their cousin and her girlfriend tucked away in a dark corner. He doesn’t think it’s sickening when Keith snorts a soft breath onto the skin below Lance’s neck, or runs calloused fingers over equally scarred knuckles. He doesn’t think it’s sickening that his parents keep throwing them tender glances, and Pidge and Hunk have spent all night plotting the best way to get the couple underneath the mistletoe. And he especially doesn’t think it’s sickening that neither he nor Keith _care_. The damn plant means nothing to them, but they leave Pidge and Hunk to their fun.

 _Maybe_ , Lance thinks – half watching his family start up a game of charades and half focused on the shapes Keith is tracing into the back of Lance’s hand, _maybe Earth isn’t warm_.

There are warm things about it, this much he knows. He thinks about the smell after a rain shower, his mother’s hugs, the sound his backdoor makes when it blows in the wind because the latch is broken. He thinks about growing up surrounded by siblings, about the same carrot cake that Hunk and his mums always brought round for coffee dates and about Christmases spent snuggled in the corner of his old, ratty couch.

Keith shifts his head, burying his nose just above Lance’s collarbone and inhaling deeply like he’s savouring the smell of Lance for later. Lance decides that Earth is not warm, but his memories of it are. They are tinted with a gentle orange glow that causes ripples of warmth to cascade across his skin.

_Earth is not warm, but its inhabitants are._

Lance tilts his chin and presses chaste kisses to the crown of Keith’s head, again and again and again. He’s sure Keith is suffocating himself trying to hide his blush in Lance’s shirt, but he’s too happy and _warm_ to stop pressing kiss after kiss until finally Keith lifts his head and breaks the contact. It’s only for a moment before Keith replaces the crown of his head with his lips and they share a gentle kiss on Lance’s ratty couch, warmth tingling down both of their spines.

Lance can barely concentrate on his surroundings with Keith pressed so easily against him like this, but he hears soft voices that he recognises as _more warmth_ somewhere off to his right so he tunes in to the conversation.

“So what’s the point? Isn’t it just a plant?”

That’s Coran, his voice raised in confusion. Lance guesses he’s a little overwhelmed by the human celebration he’s been cast witness to. No doubt Allura is too, but Lance would bet she’ll do a better job of taking it in her stride.

“It’s Christmas tradition to kiss under the mistletoe.”

That voice belongs to Shiro, patient and even and infuriatingly proud like Coran had just run a marathon rather than ask a question. _Good luck explaining mistletoe to them_ , Lance thinks with an internal smile. _Even_ I _don’t fully understand it and I’ve lived on this planet all my life_.

Lance and Keith break apart long enough for Lance to spare a glance towards their friends, just as Allura offers an input to the conversation.

“Oh, is that what Keith and Lance are doing?”

Lance catches sight of Allura’s finger outstretched towards them, her head twisting in search of the plant that should be above their heads. He smiles briefly and slides his hands to the back of Keith’s neck, tilting their foreheads together. He just barely catches Shiro’s response before he’s lost to the world again.

“No, I think they mostly just like kissing.”

*

Keith, it appears, has not been enlightened to the fabulous invention of the sock. Or if he has, he has been severely mislead into believing Lance’s legs are a suitable substitute. His toes are positively _freezing_ against the inside of Lance’s knee, though Lance can feel the heat radiating from the rest of his body.

Keith likes to sleep curled up in a ball, arms tucked to his chest and toes just slightly poking out to search for warmth in the underside of Lance’s legs. It’s cute – especially when a soft snore rises from his lips and he subconsciously tucks himself closer to Lance – but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s more than a little unpleasant for Lance’s body temperature. Still, he has yet to complain.

He watches stray hairs rise and fall under the gentle breaths Keith dusts over the pillow. It wouldn’t be the first time Lance has laid awake to catch the rare beauty of a sleeping Keith, but it’s strangely made all the more intimate by the location of Lance’s childhood bedroom. Keith is as much a part of him as the posters on the wall now, woven tightly into the softest parts of his soul.

Lance throws an arm over Keith’s hip before he falls asleep, welcoming the resulting snuffle against his chest. Despite the frozen toes pressing insistently against his skin, Lance feels altogether warmer than he ever has before.

_Earth is not warm, but Keith is._


End file.
